"It's as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid." That's what Jamie Griffin says the BP man told her about the smelly, rainbow-streaked gunk coating the floor of the "floating hotel" where Griffin was feeding hundreds of cleanup workers during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, the workers were tracking the gunk inside on their boots. Griffin, as chief cook and maid, was trying to clean it. But even boiling water didn't work.

"The BP representative said, 'Jamie, just mop it like you'd mop any other dirty floor,'" Griffin recalls in her Louisiana drawl.

It was the opening weeks of what everyone, echoing President Barack Obama, was calling "the worst environmental disaster in American history." At 9:45 p.m. local time on April 20, 2010, a fiery explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig had killed 11 workers and injured 17. One mile underwater, the Macondo well had blown apart, unleashing a gusher of oil into the gulf. At risk were fishing areas that supplied one third of the seafood consumed in the U.S., beaches from Texas to Florida that drew billions of dollars' worth of tourism to local economies, and Obama's chances of reelection. Republicans were blaming him for mishandling the disaster, his poll numbers were falling, even his 11-year-old daughter was demanding, "Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?"

Griffin did as she was told: "I tried Pine-Sol, bleach, I even tried Dawn on those floors." As she scrubbed, the mix of cleanser and gunk occasionally splashed onto her arms and face.

Within days, the 32-year-old single mother was coughing up blood and suffering constant headaches. She lost her voice. "My throat felt like I'd swallowed razor blades," she says.

Lebanese site says violation of airspace by Israeli reconnaissance jets, warplanes has become regular, but last two days' air traffic 'unusually high'.

Two Israeli warplanes penetrated Friday morning into Lebanese airspace and soared for about three hours above the capital Beirut, according to a report by the Lebanese military.

Earlier in the day Lebanese news site El-Nashra reported IAF aircraft were hovering in the country's aerial space near the southern towns of Bint Jbeil and Marjayoun and were apparently carrying out simulated attacks. A military source quoted by the site said, "These are simulated attacks the likes of which we have not seen." No Israeli officials confirmed the reports.

United States officials suspect Israel struck targets in Syria on either Thursday or Friday, CNN quoted two American sources saying Friday evening.

The sources said Western intelligence agencies were analyzing data pointing to an Israeli airstrike on Syria. The target of the reported airstrike was said to be a weapons facility, according to an American official cited by Fox News. There was no immediate indication that Israel struck chemical weapons targets, despite heightened tensions over the Assad regime’s use of weapons of mass destruction against rebels.

The United States believes Israel has conducted an airstrike into Syria, two U.S. officials tell CNN.

U.S. and Western intelligence agencies are reviewing classified data showing Israel most likely conducted a strike in the Thursday-Friday time frame, according to both officials. This is the same time frame that the U.S. collected additional data showing Israel was flying a high number of warplanes over Lebanon.

One official said the United States had limited information so far and could not yet confirm those are the specific warplanes that conducted a strike. Based on initial indications, the U.S. does not believe Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace to conduct the strikes.

The Columbus High School Mighty Cardinals had won the 4x100-meter relay--by seven yards, no less--and had a shot at the state championship. That was until Junior sprinter Derrick Hayes pointed to the sky. Hayes's father, K.C., said that his son made a gesture of thanks to God, but raising a hand to the sky is considered excessive celebration according to the state scholastic rules. And with that, the team was disqualified.

"It was a reaction," K.C. Hayes said. "You're brought up your whole life that God gives you good things, you're blessed."

Many interviewed around town said that this was a violation of freedom of religion rights. Columbus High School said that religious gestures are not banned, but they must be done off of the competition field or court.

At the end of the week, debkafile’s military sources report that both established a military presence in Syria and Lebanon, just across Israel’s two northern borders. An Iranian airlift placed Iranian boots on the ground in Syria for the first time in more than two years of its civil war. It was also the first time Israel had ever seen uniformed Iranian soldiers present at close quarters on the soil of a close neighbor.

The arrivals are members of the violent Basij volunteer militia which is trained in urban combat tactics for suppressing anti-regime unrest in Iranian cities. They are the first Iranian troops to confront Syrian rebels in combat. Roughly 6,000-8,000 militiamen have arrived so far – a figure comparable to the size of the Hizhballah elite units fighting for Bashar Assad in Syria.

The Basij militiamen were stationed in Damascus and sent to guard Syrian Shiite border villages situated opposite Hizballah-controlled South Lebanon. This deployment has placed Iranian troops opposite the intersection of the Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese borders.

Authorities were investigating a valley fever outbreak that sickened 28 workers at solar power plants under construction in Central California.

State public health and work safety staff visited sites in San Luis Obispo County two months ago, the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/10TMNwA) reported Tuesday.

They were investigating valley fever illnesses among workers building the Topaz Solar Farm and California Valley Solar Ranch.

California also is trying to stem a valley fever outbreak that has caused dozens of deaths among Central Valley prisoners since 2006. This week, federal officials ordered the relocation of more than 3,000 high-risk inmates.

The Andalusia Department of Health confirmed an outbreak of Q fever in Villaverde del Rio that affected 17 people. Q fever is a zoonosis transmitted to humans through the air, never from person to person, by inhalation of these organisms from air contaminated mostly by excreta of infected animals.

The disease, with an incubation period of 10 to 40 days, produces high fevers and headaches, can affect organs such as the liver and, in severe cases, lead to pneumonia, but it has a low mortality and can be treated with antibiotics.

A two-story house in central China collapsed Friday morning while being lifted off its foundation, crushing seven people to death and injuring 21 others, local officials said.

Dozens of people were helping to move the house, which sat on low-lying ground in Hedao village, when it collapsed, the Yanjin county government said on its website. By late afternoon, rescue crews finished searching the site, retrieving two bodies and sending to area hospitals 26 others, five of whom later died, the government said.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency said at the time of the accident, a 37-person construction crew, mostly comprised of women, was working at the site in the village, in central Henan province about 650 kilometers (400 miles) south of Beijing.

A fierce, wind-whipped brush fire grew along the California coast northwest of Los Angeles on Friday, threatening thousands of homes and a military base as about 200 dwellings were evacuated and a university campus closed.

A force of more than 900 firefighters had managed by daybreak to carve containment lines around about 10 percent of the perimeter of the inferno, which has scorched some 10,000 acres of dry, dense brush and chaparral since erupting on Thursday morning.

Several farm buildings and recreational vehicles were engulfed, and fire officials said 15 homes were damaged, though no residential structures were lost and no injuries have been reported, authorities said.

Public support for Spain's ruling center-right party has slipped following a high-level corruption scandal and ongoing recession, and Spaniards remain pessimistic about the political and economic outlook, a poll showed on Friday.

Half of Spaniards consider the political situation to be "very bad" and ranked corruption as Spain's number two problem behind unemployment, according to a survey by the state-owned Sociological Investigations Centre (CIS), carried out in April.

A record high unemployment rate of 27 percent, political corruption allegations and austerity measures have eroded support for the two main political parties, the ruling People's Party (PP) and socialist PSOE, the survey of 2,482 people showed.

The European Union's economy will shrink by 0.1 per cent, according to the Brussels forecasts, a reversal of a previous forecast of 0.1pc growth in 2013 made just three months as economic indicators worsen in Europe.

Taking into account economic performance in the first quarter of the year, the commission downgraded the eurozone to a 0.4pc GDP contraction this year, lower than the initial minus 0.3pc growth forecast made in February.

Brussels figures show that last year there was 0.6pc contraction in growth indicating that the eurozone is headed for its first ever back-to-back years of falling production amid continuing fears that the economy is being strangled by a lack of investment.

Libyan soldiers have been stationed at Tripoli's main square to protect a rally in support of the government that was planned for Friday afternoon, a source at the prime minister's office said.

"They are expecting to have some demonstrations and I would expect it's because they want to protect the demonstrators," the source told Reuters. A defense ministry source said the order came from the prime minister's office.

Reuters witnesses saw the soldiers on the square as well as on the main road to the airport.

A former star college athlete who told family and friends that she was breaking up with her long time boyfriend has been reported missing - and her boyfriend shot himself in the head after police called him in for questioning, it was revealed today.

David Marshall Roe, 24, used both hands to place his gun under his neck and fire after police pulled over his SUV Thursday afternoon in a parking lot for the Eden Prairie City Hall.

It is believed Roe is the last person to see Mandy Marie Matula, 24, who was reported missing by her family at 8:23 a.m. Thursday.

The UK Independence Party leader, Nigel Farage, (centre) says he has sent a 'shockwave' to the political establishment, coming second in the South Shields by-election and winning dozens of county council seats. The party made big gains in Lincolnshire, Hampshire and Essex, where Mark Ellis, Kerry Smith and Nigel Le Gresley celebrated winning in Basildon (left). In response panicked Tory ministers promised tougher measures on immigration on Europe.

A U.S. military transport plane carrying fuel disappeared from radar screens near the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on Friday, Kyrgyzstan's Emergencies Ministry said, citing information from a U.S. military base.

"(The plane) disappeared from the radar screen. It is a military fuel transporter C-135," said a ministry source.

The plane disappeared near the Kyrgyz village of Chaldovar, 90 km (55 miles) from the U.S. airforce base at Manas in Kyrgyzstan, which U.S. forces maintain for operations in Afghanistan.

The Texas fertilizer plant that exploded two weeks ago, killing 14 people and injuring about 200, was a repeat target of theft by intruders who tampered with tanks and caused the release of toxic chemicals, police records reviewed by Reuters show.

Police responded to at least 11 reports of burglaries and five separate ammonia leaks at West Fertilizer Co over the past 12 years, according to 911 dispatch logs and criminal offense reports Reuters obtained from the McLennan County Sheriff's office in Waco, Texas through an Open Records Request.

Some of the leaks, including one reported in October 2012, were linked to theft or interference with tank valves.

Almost one year after ousting Nicolas Sarkozy, things are not going too well for President François Hollande. We asked a selection of French people, from senators to academics and members of the public, to pass judgement on Hollande's first year. It does not make for pleasant reading.

On May 6th President François Hollande will mark one year since being swept to power on a wave of euphoria.

But since that day, when crowds flocked into Place de la Bastille in Paris, to celebrate the return to power of the Socialist Party after 17 years in the wilderness, Hollande has had a tough time.

The former presenter of It’s A Knockout, 83, was described as an “opportunistic predator” after he pleaded guilty to 14 counts of indecent assault between 1968 and 1986.

Linda McDougall, a producer at BBC Manchester in the late Sixties and Seventies, said Hall was a “complete nuisance” who routinely put his hands “all over you and all over anyone female who came in”.

She said the presenter had a room set aside at the BBC where he could entertain “lady friends” and that “everyone knew” about his “amazing set up” and that the women were “not coming in for cups of tea”.

Angie Bray, a Conservative member of the culture, media and sport select committee, said that the BBC’s “indulgence” of Hall bore striking similarities to the corporation’s approach to Jimmy Savile.

The anti-European Union UK Independence Party made big gains in local elections, grabbing support from Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives in a vote that underlines widespread frustration with Britain's traditional parties.

Early results showed UKIP had won 42 council seats - as many as the opposition Labour party - after seven of 34 councils had been declared. Full results of the elections in England and Wales are expected later on Friday.

UKIP, which wants Britain to leave the EU and an end to "open-door immigration", also pushed Cameron's Conservatives into third place in an election for a national parliamentary seat in northern England in a humiliating blow to the premier.

State forces and militias loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stormed the coastal village of Baida on Thursday, killing at least 50 people including women and children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The pro-opposition monitoring group said the final death toll was likely to exceed 100. Many of those killed appeared to have been executed by shooting or stabbing, it said, and other bodies were found burned.

Activist reports on the killings could not be independently verified as the Syrian government restricts access for independent media.

In nature, some strains of the influenza virus are highly lethal while others jump easily from person to person. What public health officials fear most is a hybrid that combines the lethality of one with the transmissibility of the other, creating a deadly global pandemic.

Now a team of Chinese scientists has investigated that in their lab by creating a new hybrid virus. They combined H5N1 avian influenza, which is highly lethal but doesn’t transmit easily between people, with the highly contagious H1N1 swine flu strain responsible for infecting tens of millions of people in 2009.

The new hybrid virus passed easily between guinea pigs, which are used to study how flu infects mammals. Molecular changes in the virus may provide clues of what to look for in circulating H5N1 strains, perhaps allowing scientists to anticipate when viruses will more easily infect humans.

Mr. Letta says he wants to see radical policy reforms emerge from the European Council meeting next month.

Meanwhile, the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso has been sending out mixed messages; agreeing that policy reforms are needed but also insisting that debt reducing austerity measures are equally crucial.

After he said goodbye to Mr Letta, Mr Barroso was straight onto another meeting, this time with workers unions and employer groups. Apparently those who represent ordinary EU workers were not happy.

Employers, meanwhile, are pointing a finger of blame directly at politicians and regulators.

The Quality of Nongfu Spring'' incident has completely
shattered Chinese people's hope for safe food.
People ask themselves, if even the bottled water
is worse than the tap water, what can we drink?
Which kind of bottled water is the cleanest?
Why bottled water' companies have different standards?
Such questions bother people's minds,
and they eagerly want to know the answers now.
However, behind all of these transpire people's worries,
and the standards' chaos of China's bottled water industry.

Extreme weather across much of the country with record-breaking heat on the west coast and record-breaking snowfall across America's Midwest. Raging wildfires were causing problems in California whilst a foot of snow brought mid-westerners to a halt. Temperature should reach near 90 in northern California. Meanwhile, the winter storm is aiming at Iowa and should reach the southern states by tomorrow.

High school student Cameron D’Ambrosio of Methuen, Massachusetts, faces up to 20 years in prison for felony charges of communicating terrorist threats with bail set at $1 million, the town’s police chief said Wednesday.

D’Ambrosio, 18, reportedly skipped classes that day and was caught posting offensive lyrics on Facebook that included death threats and references to the tragic Boston Marathon massacre.

The leader of Hezbollah has hinted he is ready support the Assad regime in the Syrian war.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the powerful Lebanese Shiite militia, warned on Tuesday during a rare interview that Syria had 'real friends' who would not allow it 'to fall into the hands' of America, Israel and even Islamic extremists.

His comments came after U.S. President Barack Obama that he was ready to up the game in Syria, following reports of chemical weapons allegedly used by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fighters.

Street gangs had become so intimidating in Springfield that citizens stopped calling the police on them. And no wonder: gangs were so strong that motorcycle-riding members once cruised a neighborhood with military-style assault rifles strapped to their backs in a show of force. But crime in the gang-infested areas of the Massachusetts city has begun to drop after law enforcement started using a military-style approach of its own. As Lesley Stahl reports, counterinsurgency methods used in overseas conflicts are being employed in Springfield to take the streets back from the gangs. Stahl's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, May 5 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Massachusetts State Trooper Mike Cutone realized that the methods of the insurgents he combated as a Green Beret in Iraq were similar to those used by the Springfield gangs. "Insurgents and gang members both want to operate in a failed area," he tells Stahl, referring to the breakdown in cooperation between the citizens and authorities. "They know they can live off the passive support of the community, where the community is not going to call or engage the local police," says Cutone.

European human rights judges are poised to order that millions of pounds be paid to Serbian conscript troops who fought in a war of ethnic cleansing.

The soldiers’ claims for pay for their part in the four-month war against Nato and British forces some 14 years ago will be heard by the appeal chamber of the European Court of Human Rights later this month.

The decision of the Strasbourg judges to hear pay claims from troops involved in the Kosovo war - described by a UN war crimes court as a ‘criminal enterprise’ - was condemned by Tory MPs as ‘bizarre’ and ‘lunacy’.

Goldman Sachs was let off a £20million tax bill to avoid embarrassing George Osborne, the High Court heard yesterday.

Revenue bosses are said to have stopped chasing Goldman Sachs for money it owed after the investment bank agreed to sign up to the Government’s flagship tax agreement – seen as a major coup for the Chancellor.

Senior officials at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are alleged to have granted Goldman Sachs a ‘sweetheart deal’ effectively cancelling the bill, because they feared the bank might otherwise back out of the agreement.

UKIP surged into second place in the South Shields by-election tonight, which was won by Labour candidate Emma Lewell-Buck (pictured left at the podium). UKIP's Richard Elwin (right) secured almost 25 per cent of the vote in the constituency which has been held by Labour since 1935. The result proved disastrous for the Lib Dems who lost their deposit with only 352 votes and the Conservatives who picked up only 11.5 per cent of the vote. The byelection was called following the resignation of the former Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

The UK Space Agency has announced that British scientists are now working with Nasa to develop the spacecraft, known as Sunjammer, which will use a 13,000 square foot solar sail to propel itself nearly two million miles towards the sun.

The sail will then help control the spacecraft in a steady position in orbit around the sun where it will act as a kind of forward observatory of the star at the centre of our solar system.

Sensitive instruments on board will provide scientist with an early warning of solar storms that can produce streams of particles capable of damaging satellites and power grids on earth.

Guatemala declared an emergency in four southeastern towns on Thursday, suspending citizens' constitutional rights in an area where deadly protests over a proposed silver mine have erupted in recent weeks.

Guatemalan President Otto Perez announced the move in an effort to quell protests targeting the mine belonging to Canadian miner Tahoe Resources Inc. Two people have been killed in the demonstrations.

Egyptian security forces fired tear gas to disperse a small group of hardline Islamist protesters who were attempting to scale the walls of the state security headquarters in a Cairo suburb late Thursday night.

Around 2,000 protesters from several Salafi Islamist groups had staged a protest earlier on Thursday night outside the security headquarters against what they said was a return to the force's pre-revolution methods.

After security forces fired tear gas, the remaining protesters, some of whom had also attempted to break into a nearby police officers' club, left the area.

The United States is rethinking its opposition to arming the Syrian rebels, President Barack Obama's defense chief said on Thursday, even as Obama himself signaled that no decision to deepen U.S. involvement in the conflict was imminent.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel cautioned that giving weapons to the forces fighting President Bashar al-Assad was only one option being considered by the United States. It carries the risk of arms finding their way into the hands of anti-American extremists among the insurgents, such as the Nusra Front.

But it may be more palatable to many in the United States than direct U.S. military intervention in the conflict, such as carving out a no-fly zone or sending in troops to secure chemical weapons.

North Korea's continuing development of nuclear technology and long-range ballistic missiles will move it closer to its stated goal of being able to hit the United States with an atomic weapon, a new Pentagon report to Congress said on Thursday.

The report, the first version of an annual Pentagon assessment required by law, said Pyongyang's Taepodong-2 missile, with continued development, might ultimately be able to reach parts of the United States carrying a nuclear payload if configured as an intercontinental ballistic missile.

North Korea launched a multi-stage rocket that delivered a satellite into orbit in December, an advance that "contributes heavily" to the country's development of a long-range ballistic missile capability, the report said.

Three more people in China have died from severe respiratory infections from the H7N9 virus, pushing the number of deaths so far to 27, according to official and media reports today.

No provinces or cities reported new infections today, according to an update from Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP). The total number of cases remains at 128, according to the latest update today from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO's update includes confirmation of two deaths in previously confirmed patients. Also, local officials in Hunan province reported the death of an earlier reported 55-year-old man who was a resident of Jiangxi province but hospitalized in neighboring Hunan province, according to Xinhua, China's state news agency. He was transferred to that facility on Apr 26, about 11 days after his symptoms began.

A new strain of bird flu that is causing a deadly outbreak among people in China is a threat to world health and should be taken seriously, scientists said on Wednesday.

The H7N9 strain has killed 24 people and infected more than 125, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), which has described it as "one of the most lethal" flu viruses.

The high mortality rate, together with relatively large numbers of cases in a short period and the possibility it might acquire the ability to transmit between people, make H7N9 a pandemic risk, experts said.

A second wolf has tested positive for rabies in Interior Alaska. The news comes just a week after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced another wolf shot in the same region tested positive for the viral disease. It was the first animal to test positive for the virus so far inland.

A trapper shot the wolf in mid-March near the Chandalar Lake area -- roughly 180 miles north of Fairbanks, near the Brooks Range -- after spotting the animal caught in a trap. The trapper described the wolf’s behavior as dull and unaware, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

A state virology lab in Fairbanks confirmed on Wednesday that the wolf was infected with rabies. The trapper who shot the wolf wasn’t directly exposed to the disease but his dogs were.